Picking up the pieces: John Siracusa mourns the Power PC

Macs are now slightly less special.

Remaining mysteries

While I reserve the right to weep for what might have been, it's time to return to reality, and to the present. A few things remain mysterious about yesterday's announcement. One thing in particular was made notable by its absence.

Here's the $64 million question: WTF happened to AMD? Okay, fine, Apple and IBM are splitsville and Freescale won't return Steve's calls. Time to give up the noble struggle to be an island of CPU power in a sea of x86 PCs. Sure, I get it. But if you're Steve Jobs, how is AMD not your very first call?

Of course, maybe it was his first call, but maybe AMD wasn't receptive. Maybe Intel simply presented a sweeter deal. (Intel certainly has the most practice making nice with PC OS makers.) Intel has been wooing Apple for years, mostly futilely. Maybe their past efforts finally paid off in a big way, and AMD was left out of the loop.

No matter how it happened, it seems very strange that Apple, a company with no existing x86 ties, would not choose to go with the desktop x86 CPU performance leader and the apparent "winner" of the 64-bit ISA wars in the Windows PC market.

But wait, what does "going with AMD" really mean? Can't Apple use AMD CPUs any time it wants to once it's switched to Intel's x86 chips? The terms of any contact between Intel and Apple have not been disclosed, but it seems safe to assume that any such contract will expire eventually. So long as Apple keeps using the same CPU that Windows primarily targets, they stay on the CPU development gravy train. So it seems like AMD is not out of the question for the future, even if it is troublingly absent from Apple's public strategy today.

And speaking of AMD, what about x86-64? Surely Apple plans to use Intel chips that implement AMD's x86-64 extensions, at least in desktop and server products. Again, there was no mention of this in the WWDC keynote or press release. I have no theories here, only the expectation that Apple will indeed use x86-64 CPUs in its high-end products.

The road ahead

Let's get down to brass tacks. Where do we go from here, and how does this play out? Here's my take, again based on gut feelings and with no inside information. It's presented in the form of a speculative F.A.Q. Remember, even though I fearlessly make predictions, this is all speculation. Feel free to return to this article a year or two from now and see how well I did.

Q: Will x86 Macs be cheaper than today's Macs?

A: A better question would be, "Will x86 Macs be cheaper than 'equivalent' PowerPC-based Macs would have been had the IBM relationship not gone south?" My answer is "no." Expect Macs to remain more expensive than PCs.

Q: Will I be able to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple PC?

A: No.

Q: Try and stop me!

A: Apple most assuredly will—try, that is. And they'll fail, just like Microsoft failed to stop people from installing Linux and MAME on the Xbox. But like MS, all Apple has to do is make sure that only Slashdot-reading, VoIP-using, PC-assembling, DMCA-breaking geeks hack their way to an "unapproved" configuration of hardware and software. If it's illegal (thanks to the Mac OS X EULA or the DMCA) or at least "technically complex and/or annoying" to run Mac OS X on non-Apple x86 hardware, Apple will be able to absorb any loss in hardware sales attributable to geeks and hardware hackers.

A: Probably not. I expect Apple to start with Intel's next generation of multi-core CPUs. Hannibal will have more to say about this issue.

Q: Will I be able to run Windows applications on an x86 Mac?

A: Not unless you also run Windows on it.

Q: Okay, will I be able to boot an x86 Mac into Windows?

A: No.

Q: Try and sto—

A: See earlier answer about running Mac OS X on a non-Apple PC. Update: I missed this quote from Phil Schiller. "That doesn't preclude someone from running [Windows] on a Mac. They probably will. We won't do anything to preclude that." My reaction to this new information can be found in the article discussion thread.

Q: Will I be able to run Windows on an x86 Mac?

A: With something like Virtual PC, yes. (Well, VMware, really.) Only it'll actually be fast now, close to native speed if all goes well.

Q: Will Apple continue to design its own motherboards, or will it use commodity PC parts?

A: I think Apple will continue to produce custom designs, or will "bless" a particular PC motherboard/chipset maker (like Intel, for instance...) and contract them to build boards/chipsets that suit Apple's needs.

Q: Will Apple's planned emulation of the PowerPC ISA on an x86 chip really work?

A: It'll be "good enough," but not nearly as good as 68K emulation was on the PowerPC.

Q: Will developers get onboard with such a big change, or will they revolt and abandon ship?

A: If history is any indication, enough developers will ride out the storm to maintain the life of the platform.

Q: Will Apple maintain an internal PowerPC build of Mac OS X even after moving its entire product line to x86 processors "just in case" they ever need to switch back?

A: I hope so, if only to continue to enforce the discipline of portability.

Q: Is Microsoft worried that every Windows user is suddenly a potential Mac OS X user if Apple ever decides to give up or de-emphasize its hardware business?

A: You bet your ass they are. Don't believe the hype. Microsoft worries about everything, and this is more than a little blip on their radar.

Q: Would Apple ever do that? You know, sell Mac OS X to current Windows users to install on their existing PCs?

A: Someday, maybe, but not soon, and probably only after Apple is convinced that such a market exists and is big enough to be worth sacrificing their own hardware business. How will Apple be convinced of this? Why, by the number of people "illegally" installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, of course. Multiply that number by the the inverse of the ratio of geeks to "normal" people and you get a rough estimate of the total number of potential software-only Windows-to-Mac OS X switchers. Then comes an awkward call to Michael Dell...

Q: Will x86 Macs come with a two-buttons mouse?

A: Hey, we're just taking about moving an entire platform to a new CPU architecture (again). Let's not get crazy!

Q:Did you notice that none of the pictures of PowerPC chips shown in the slides during the WWDC keynote presentation had the "G5" logo on them? Instead, they all had a generic purple badge with "PowerPC" written on it.

A: Yeah, I noticed that too. Steve angry! Steve smash IBM!

Q: Can you wrap this thing up already?

A: Sure.

The end

There's no two ways about it, I'm in stage 4: depression. A lot of people are excited about the prospect of a future Apple without the dark cloud of CPU uncertainty over its head. I like that idea too, but I only wish it had come to fruition through IBM. After the G5 introduction, I thought it had. I was actually encouraged by IBM's game console contract wins. It seemed like the PowerPC ISA had a bright future. Maybe it does, but apparently not with Apple.

I've also heard this transition compared to the 68K-to-PowerPC change. Emotionally, nothing could be further from the truth. As technically risky as the PowerPC move was—arguably a lot more risky than moving to the dominant x86 ISA and the dominant CPU maker—it at least had an air of technology-based excitement. Apple was moving to a new, better ISA. The x86 ISA is anything but new, and few would call it "technically better" than the PowerPC ISA. Yes, Apple is assured a steady stream of competitive CPUs as long as Windows targets the same ISA, but at a cost. Apple's CPUs may no longer be slower than the competition, but they also give up any hope of being faster.

That, in a nutshell, is why this is a dark day for Apple. It's yet another little thing that Macs used to do, if not always better, then at least differently than Windows PCs. Macs are now slightly less special.

If all goes as planned, the Mac platform will be stronger in a couple of years than it is today. (Who knows, maybe Doom 4 will even get decent frame-rates.) I'll buy a multi-core, multi-CPU x86-64 Mac and I'll like it because it'll be fast, good-looking, and it'll run Mac OS X. But I'll still think of what might have been...and what someday might be again. Call me a hopeless romantic. I'll miss the PowerPC.

John Siracusa / John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer.